United States Senate election in Nebraska, 2036
The 2036 United States Senate election in Nebraska took place on November 4, 2036, concurrently with the U.S. presidential election as well as other elections to the United States Senate and House of Representatives as well as various state and local elections. Incumbent Senator Deb Fischer had announced would not seek re-election for a fifth term. The race began in October 2035 when four-term incumbent Nebraska Senator Deb Fischer announced her retirement. Both the Democratic Party and Republican Party sought high-profile candidates to compete for the open seat, with the Democrats believing they could expand their Senate super-majority even further and the Republicans knowing it was vital to retain the Senate seats they had. Senator Fischer, who was 85, and the oldest Senator in the US Senate at the time, had previously planned to retire in 2030, and not seek a fourth term, but was persuaded by the Republican party to run for re-election. On the Democratic side, longtime Representative from Nebraska's second congressional district, Kara Eastman, easily won the nomination to become the Senate candidate. This greatly concerned Republicans, who feared Eastman's popularity and a retiring incumbent could mean that they lose the Senate seat to the Democrats. In response, the Republicans ran Representative Lindstrom of Nebraska's first congressional district, hoping that his relative popularity and name recognition in Nebraska would be enough to retain the Senate seat. The Conservative party also decided to field a candidate, in the form of Nebraskan multi-millionaire businessman Roscoe Ricketts, the son of former Nebraskan Governor, Pete Ricketts. Ricketts running on the Conservative party ticket broke the electoral pact between the Republican party and Conservative Party and further deteriorated the relationship between the two as a result. Prior to the election, many political analysts believed that Lindstrom would win the state with anywhere from 55% to 59% of the vote. Despite Nebraska being a heavily Republican state, Representative Eastman's popularity in the state along with the increase in the Asian-American population, which overwhelmingly votes Democrat, meant that there was an outside chance a Democrat could win the Senate race. Lindstrom was on average 14 points ahead of Eastman in polling, and most political outlets predicted the race would be Likely Republican. However, this changed when Nebraska businessman, Roscoe Ricketts, who was the son of a former Governor, Pete Ricketts, declared his candidacy on the Conservative ticket, breaking the Republican-Conservative electoral pact, which prohibited the Conservative party from running a candidate for US Senate. Consequently, Kara Eastman won in a huge upset with 54.6% of the vote, and the Conservative vote was split between the Republican Lindstrom, who received 22.3% of the vote statewide, and Conservative Ricketts, who received 21.7%. Minor candidates received 1.4% of the vote statewide. Representative Kara Eastman won in the Nebraskan Senate election for her first term as a US Senator. Eastman, who had been the representative for Nebraska's second congressional district for 18 years, ran in a three-way race against Republican Brett Lindstrom, the representative of Nebraska's first congressional district, and Conservative Roscoe Ricketts, the son of former Governor Pete Ricketts and a businessman from Lincoln. Eastman was elected with 54.6% of the vote, by a margin of 32.3%, the highest margin for any Democratic candidate statewide in Nebraska since thirty years prior, with Ben Nelson's re-election in 2006. She performed 12 points better than President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did in the presidential race in Nebraska. She carried 82 out of 93 counties statewide. There were two debates, held in September and October 2036, in which Eastman, Lindstrom, and Ricketts debated various issues such as the economy, polygamous marriage, the debt and deficit, foreign policy, jobs, and tax and regulatory policy.